Topic: A7

While rumors have long claimed that Apple has plans to replace Intel's x86 chips in Macs with its own custom ARM Application Processors, MacGPUs are among a series of potentially more valuable opportunities available to Apple's silicon design team, and could conceivably replicate Apple's history of beating AMD and Nvidia in mobile graphics processors--and Intel in mobile CPUs.

Between 2006 and 2013, AMD & Nvidia fumbled the ball in mobile chips, losing their positions as the world's leading GPU suppliers by failing to competitively address the vast mobile market, enabling Apple to incrementally develop what are now the most powerful mainstream Application Processor GPUs to ship in vast volumes. Here's how it happened, the lessons learned and how Apple could make it happen again.

Apple's so-called "iPhone 6" may include a new chip code-named "Phosphorus" for analyzing new data, such as barometric pressure of the surrounding environment of the company's motion coprocessor, a new schematic suggests [updated].

Chipmaker Nvidia on Tuesday detailed the new "Denver" variant of its Tegra K1 mobile processor, a high-performance in-order design that represents the first foray into 64-bit processing for Android devices -- nearly a full year after Apple shocked the mobile world with its own 64-bit A7 processor.

To date, Samsung has been the sole supplier of custom A-series processors for Apple's popular iPhone and iPad, but industry watchers again expect that to change after the South Korean company signaled that its microprocessor business has a bleak outlook.

As IBM secretly mulls plans to sell off its increasing outdated processor chip fabs in New York and Vermont, a new wave of mobile chip developers--led by Apple, ARM and Qualcomm--are hiring away many of the top chip designers of the once leading firm.

Among the surprises that Apple unveiled at WWDC 2014 is the company's new Metal framework and shader language, aimed at radically enhancing the hardware accelerated graphics potential of the A7 Application Processor powering the company's latest iOS devices.

Apple's most popular computing devices, from the iPhone and iPad to MacBook Pro and iMac, could all be powered by the same ARM-based processors, if the company were to decide to make such a switch, according to a new report.

Speaking to analysts and investors, a senior vice president of Samsung stated "we, as a market leader, are following the market trend" in adding biosensors to mobile devices, while sidestepping the company's delay in 64-bits and the moribund 2 percent adoption of Knox by enterprise users.

An independent analysis of the microarchitecture behind Apple's latest A7 processor has shown that the company was not overstating when it called the design "desktop class," with the new silicon matching up well against Intel's recent desktop components.

An iOS security white paper published by Apple on Wednesday offers a deeper understanding of the company's Touch ID fingerprint sensing system and the so-called "Secure Enclave" found in the A7 SoC, both of which were introduced with the iPhone 5s.

The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, the patent licensing arm of the University of Wisconsin, alleges in a newly-filed lawsuit that Apple's A7 processor infringes a university-developed patent that improves "the efficiency and performance of contemporary computer processors."

Rather than serving as an alternative to Samsung for production of Apples A-series chips, GlobalFoundries may just serve as a subcontractor for Samsung itself in producing chips for the iPhone and iPad, according to a new report.

Apple will reportedly add a second U.S. chip fabrication plant to its supply chain, partnering with California-based GlobalFoundries to produce A-series processors at a new $6 billion facility in upstate New York.

Samsung sought to assuage its investors' concerns about increasingly intense competition with Apple and the cooling market for premium Android smartphones, outlining a specs race that described a future with 64-bit Exynos chips, super high resolution mobile displays and a new focus on software.